


Cloud Seeding

by Moorishflower



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:05:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cloud seeding, n. A form of weather modification that attempts to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds. Arthur is just the dry ice - Robert is the one who actually has to make it rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cloud Seeding

  
"So this is what you choose to do? Now that the weight of the world is off your shoulders?"

Robert turns his head, although he doesn't have to – he can see _everything_ from up here. Absolutely everything. The whole world sprawls out below him, like dots of paint. He's so high up that his eyes can't perceive anything except for blobs of color.

Ten thousand feet in the air, and yet he is not alone.

"I think I should remember you," Robert says, and the young man – younger than him, surely, but not by all that much – steps over a rising cloud, condensation leaving his trouser cuffs damp. He has his hair slicked back, and the immediately recognizable shape of a gun is pressed against the inside of his jacket.

He looks familiar, but Robert can't place him.

"Security, sir," the young man says. "You can call me Arthur, if you'd like."

"Security," Robert murmurs. The word clicks in his mind, with a sort of awful resonance. There's something here that he should remember. Something powerful. Something that's been bothering him ever since he made the decision to dissolve his father's company.

"You're thinking too much," Arthur says. His voice is too close – Robert turns, and he's standing _right there_, the only warm and living thing for ten thousand miles. Robert is beginning to rethink the brilliance of being all the way up here, alone, and very, very cold.

He blinks, and he's sitting in a café. Arthur is across from him, holding a cup of coffee.

"You look familiar," Robert says. "Have we met before?"

Arthur smiles. "Only here. Never anywhere else."

"No, that's not it." Robert sighs. "Am I dreaming?"

"Mm. Can you remember how you got here?"

Robert can't. Somewhere nearby the sound of breaking glass, uncomfortably loud, splinters the calm of his subconscious. No one turns to look – Robert closes his eyes. _It's a dream. Recognize that it is a dream and move on._

Slowly, the sound fades.

"Impressive," Arthur says. When Robert opens his eyes, Arthur is leaning forward, elbows on the table, cup of coffee pushed off to the side. "Do you want something to drink?"

"I'm not thirsty," Robert murmurs. "Why are you here?"

"Checking up on you," Arthur answers easily. "Making sure you're all right."

"All right? My father is dead. My inheritance is gone. I know he wanted me to be my own man, but…but I don't know how. I'm too _old_ for this, Arthur. Too old to be reinventing my life."

"You're thirty-three, Robert. That's plenty of time."

"It doesn't seem that way," Robert sighs. "I know…I know you're right. But those numbers don't seem…_correct_ to me. I should be older. I _feel_ older. Is that odd?"

"It's a dream," Arthur says. "Things are always odd in dreams."

"It's not just when I'm dreaming," Robert admits. "It's…everywhere. Awake, asleep, it doesn't matter. It feels as though I've _missed_ something…but I can't remember what. You're my subconscious, Arthur…am I crazy?"

The patrons of the café – other reflections of his subconscious, Robert now realizes – all turn to look at them at once. Like they're waiting for something.

Like _he's_ waiting for something.

"I think," Arthur says, and then pauses, biting his lower lip. After a moment he shakes his head, continuing. "I think that there was a good man, once, who got lost in that idea. That he'd missed something. An opportunity, maybe. And he let it grow in him, let it grow so large that it completely ate whatever he _could_ have been. He left it alone to fester until there was nothing left but the man who _was_, instead of the man who _is_."

"You're not making any sense," Robert complains. Arthur smiles at him. When he smiles, his entire face lights up. He leans across the table, and Robert leans forward too, reflexively, as if to hear a secret.

Arthur, very gently, kisses his cheek, and then leans back again.

"I think you should tell someone," Arthur says. "Talk it out. Before you're the man who was."

Robert touches his cheek. Arthur's lips were firm, and a little bit chapped. Not, he thinks, the lips of someone he would usually want to kiss.

If it's his subconscious, shouldn't Arthur be more…?

A woman sitting at the table next to theirs stands, and places her hand firmly on Arthur's shoulder. There's a handgun poking out of her purse. Arthur doesn't look away.

"Wake up, Robert," Arthur says. The woman pulls him up, up out of his seat, her grip unyielding. "Wake up."

Other patrons are getting up – they reach for Arthur with claw-like hands, hauling him backwards, until he's buried beneath the weight of a dozen or more refractions of Robert's subconscious.

Robert takes a deep breath. He feels unusually heavy, as though the ground has just erased itself from beneath his feet. He glances down, and sees that his shoes are poised over thin air. Ten thousand feet above the city.

Robert falls…and opens his eyes.

He's lying on his hotel bed – he can hear the Los Angeles traffic, clear as a bell, through the open window. He's fallen asleep with his shoes on.

_Strange dream,_ he thinks, and reaches down to untie his shoes. He's thirty-three, but childhood habits die hard – his father taught him to take his shoes off before putting his feet up, and it's remained with him.

He pulls on the laces, his shirt cuff riding up.

Robert pauses.

There's a small puncture wound on his wrist, almost so small as to not be noticeable. It's something that only a very fine needle might leave behind. He frowns at it, rolling his sleeve up further. It isn't bleeding – it's just red, and slightly sore. He shakes his head, trying to force the grogginess of sleep to leave his system.

He closes his eyes, and experiences the bizarre sensation of a phantom memory – chapped lips brushing his cheek, and lingering there. He thinks that there's something that he's supposed to remember, but it's like grasping at clouds. Whatever it is, it's wispy and barely there.

"Arthur," he says out loud, although he isn't sure why. Something about the name seems…comforting.

_The man who was._

Robert leaves his shoe half-untied, and reaches for his cell phone.

He's been so busy dealing with the company, with his father's death, that he's been neglecting himself. Maybe he'll call a therapist, see if he can't…talk some of it out.

Yes. That sounds like a good idea.


End file.
